on looking at something felt like somebody looking at something

[cimorene]

‘Jeeves,’ I recollect saying, on returning to the apartment, ‘who was the fellow who on looking at something felt like somebody looking at something? I learned the passage at school, but it has escaped me.’

‘I fancy the individual you have in mind, sir, is the poet Keats, who compared his emotions on first reading Chapman’s Homer to those of stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.’

‘The Pacific, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. And all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.’

—PG Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves

Comments

[vass]

That is perfect. I really should give Wodehouse another chance. I've had difficulty with him before because of embarrassment squick and caper plots, but the language is so good.